


Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose

by scullywolf



Series: TXF: Scenes in Between [53]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 19:29:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4799537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullywolf/pseuds/scullywolf





	Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose

_“So what are you doing?”_  
“Studying background checks. This is what detective work is really like. We can’t come up with suspects by having visions.”  
“Jealous?” 

She scoffed. “Well, I’d say it would save us a lot of time, but we don’t seem to have gotten very far with what little you’ve been able to give us, either.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault you haven’t been able to put the pieces together. Besides, it’s like I told you. The stuff I see, there’s not anything you can do to stop it. It’s gonna happen, one way or another. But I know you don’t believe in fate any more than you believe in whatever this is I can do, so I’m not sure it’s worth having this conversation.”

“Well, by your argument, we couldn’t _not_ have the conversation.” She picked up another file from the desk and sat down. “And if I were to just stop talking right now and focus on my work, would that be because I choose to or because I’m destined to?”

“Yes,” he said, grinning. He took another bite of pie, and Scully shook her head, a small smile on her face as she turned her attention to the paperwork in front of her.

Admittedly, they didn’t have a lot of leads. There was a cleaning company that contracted with two of the victims, but not the other three; there were only a handful of employees to check, but the odds were pretty low any of them were involved. (Mulder had joked earlier that a murderer who worked for a cleaning company would have done a much better job on the blood stains left behind at the crime scenes.) The victims all had different mail carriers, different garbage collectors. The only overlap between all of them was the meter reader, but since she was a 45 year-old woman with a verifiable alibi for all but one of the murders, her background check was more of a formality than anything else. Scully read through file after file, occasionally pulling one back out to cross-reference some bit of data, making notes as she went along, but nothing was standing out.

Finally she set the folders aside with a sigh and stood up, stretching her back.

“So would you say that was a good use of your time?” Bruckman asked. She glared at him, but not unkindly. “I’m just not sure why you bother with all of that paperwork. It doesn’t seem to help.”

“Well, frequently it does,” she argued. “In fact, more often than not, that’s how we end up finding suspects in cases like this one. And in any event, I’m not sure what you think would be a _better_ use of my time.”

“You could have been eating a piece of pie. It really was good pie. You missed out.”

She laughed, shaking her head again. “If it were possible to solve crimes by eating pie, the FBI would have more applicants than they knew what to do with.”

“I’m just saying. Whatever’s gonna happen, is gonna happen. You’re not gonna catch this guy any sooner than you’re supposed to, so why bother with all the boring stuff when the end result will be the same either way?”

“And I’ll say again, I don’t believe that to be true.” She toed off her shoes and walked over to the bed. “But let’s just say you’re right. That you know how people around you will die and how things end.” She sat, pulling her feet up, cross-legged. “ _It’s something you haven’t explained. Can you see your own end?_ ”  



End file.
